Germany Become The First Team To Reach Last Four

GERMANY continued their march towards the PartyPoker.com World Cup of Pool final with a fine victory against fifth seeds Taiwan.

The German pairing of Thomas Engert and Oliver Ortmann secured a 9-4 success and will now meet either Philippines or the Czech Republic in the semi-final.

A delighted Engert said: “I felt more confident and more calm than I did yesterday when we played against Spain as we knew, on paper, that we are the better team. But today we knew that Taiwan have Yang, who is one of the best players in the world, and we had to play well.

“We got our chances and took them but also got lucky when we missed a shot and they were in a bad position. I think we put them under pressure to go 5-2 ahead and they missed shots so we knew we had a chance to win.

“When you play against a really good team it doesn’t matter how the game works as that’s your hardest match. In the first round (against Wales) we only missed one shot and run out every game but it’s not always like that.”

Germany won the lag and made a poor start as Ortmann missed a shot at the 1-ball but the Taiwanese pair of Yang Chnig-shun and Wang Hung-hsiang failed to capitalise as an attempt at the red three was wayward and the Germans took the lead.

Taiwan